WARMINSTER

It has always been a tacitly agreed policy of this Bulletin to try to keep in touch with developments at Warminster. We occasionally visit the place, time and funds permitting. The latest visit took place on 9 October (1971), when your Editor and his travelling companion, Mr Brian J. Hall, arrived by train in the afternoon. Mr Hall had never visited Warminster before, so a conducted tour was undertaken.

It was interesting to read Magonia 74’s Editorial Notes about the 1970 Warminster photographic hoax, twenty five years after publication of 'Experimental UFO Hoaxing' in MUFOB New Series 2, and we thought that some background information, plus details of a couple of other UFO hoaxes might be of interest

Over the years many thousands of UFO reports have been documented; numerous individuals and UFO organisations have analysed the information, and attempted to correlate sighting data in order to discover a pattern that will help to solve the UFO enigma. However, rarely has much thought been given to the lowest common denominator, the UFO enthusiasts themselves. How do they influence the collection and compilation of UFO data? Are investigators unbiased, thorough and scientific?Experimental HoaxingDavid Simpson. Conclusions From Controlled UFO Hoaxes. The Institute for Cultural Research Monograph Series no 26. 2005.

This is an expanded version of David Simpson’s article in MUFOB New Series 2, published in March 1976, in which he details the experimental UFO hoaxes he conducted at Warminster from 1968 to 1970. These culminated in the infamous Warminster UFO photograph which was splashed across the front page of Flying Saucer Review and which led the French physicist Pierre Guerin to make an utter fool of himself with wild pseudoscientific speculation.

Nestling in the valley of the River Wylye the town of Warminster presents an image of England that seems ever stable and tranquil: the old buildings of local stone in the main street, the dark, pipe-smoke matured beams of old pubs, and all around low, gentle, wooded hills, and the rich, summer green farmlands of Wiltshire. Sit in the public bar of one of those pubs, horse brasses gleaming on the panelled walls, and drink a pint of Usher’s Best Bitter.

After reading various literature on Warminster we decided to spend several days there.We were lucky in that the weather was good and our first night took us to the famed Cradle Hill, where we joined a couple from London. We watched the sky for most of the evening, but apart from a couple of satellites, saw nothing of note.

Thirteen people were in our skywatching party at Cradle Hill, Warminster, on the evening of Wednesday, 27 August 1969. An unlucky number? Not so far as a dramatic double UFO sighting and landing were concerned, on this auspicious occasion, anyway! Accept or reject the following – that is your prerogative.

This article was published in Merseyside UFO Bulletin nine months after David Simpson and SIUFOP conducted their famous experimental hoax at Warminster. Despite comments and suggestions made over the years, Paul Hopkins was completely unaware that SIUFOP had conducted their experiment when he wrote this piece.

Of Many 'Things'Paul Hopkins, Merseyside UFO Bulletin, volume 3, number 4, September 1970.

It is now [September 1970] almost six years since the “Thing” came to Warminster. Not forgetting that, as the Daily Mirror once put it, ‘It Started on Xmas Morning’, papers in general had a field day and were for a while seemingly full of such gems as – ‘It’s the “Thing” from Space’, ‘The Thing Probe’ and ‘What shall we do about the Thing?’

On the evening of January 3, 1970, Alan Sharp and I attended the regular Saturday night skywatch on Cradle Hill, Warminster. The night was frosty, but cloudy at first, with only a few stars visible now and again. As we reached the gate, we could hear the party of watchers walking towards us down the road from the guardhouse.

The previous issue of MUFOB was entirely devoted to an article by Alan Sharp which attacked unscientific approaches to the UFO phenomena. On Warminster, he had this to say, "Gullibility, wishful thinking, belief in the supernatural and sheer ignorance are prime factors in the generation and acceptance of UFO reports.

What one can only describe as a singularly unusual experience befell John Roseweir, national Vice-Chairman of Contact UK, and me on the night of January 12th [1970], when we were at Cradle Hill, focal centre of so many inexplicable aerial phenomena for the past five years. Singular because it was the first UFO of this particular type ever seen in our quarter of the country.

Whatever happened to Warminster? Thirty years ago it was the biggest UFO event on the planet, at least as far as British ufologists were concerned. Almost every active researcher and every ufological hanger-on must have visited that small Wiltshire town at some time in the 1960s or early 1970s - including your editor and his colleagues on MUFOB - which at that time stood for 'Merseyside UFO Bulletin'. But mention Warminster to British ufologists today and you're likely to be met with a puzzled look, or an embarrassed shrug.

At last, it seems, the Warminster revival is getting underway. With the publication in 2005 of Dewey and Reis’s In Alien Heat (reviewed in Magonia 91) an almost forgotten aspect of British ufological history was brought back into focus. Two recent books also revisit the site of England’s biggest UFO flap.

Steve Dewey and Kevin Goodman are the two people who may reasonably claim to be largely responsible for the resurgence of interest in England's greatest UFO flap, once virtually forgotten except for a few hard-core old-timers.

'UFOs not Bourgeois Journalist Fabrications', 'Young Drug-Takers Groped and Grovelled', 'Earth Time is Desperately Short – Warning', 'Anatomy of a Holocaust — and Dying Fishes' These are some of the exciting chapter headings in the second UFO book to come from the inimitable pen of Mr Arthur Shuttlewood.

A while ago I revisited Warminster and took my copy of Arthur Shuttlewood's first book The Warminster Mystery along with me to read on Cradle Hill, perhaps seeking some sort of mystical communion with the original Warminster era.

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